The Year of the Dragon roars into town today, with two weeks of celebrations capped by the famous Chinatown Parade on February 11. Saturday, I attended a New Year’s themed buffet lunch and wok cooking demonstration by acclaimed cookbook author and San Francisco native, Grace Young, in Louie’s restaurant, a Chinatown institution.

Young —wearing a lucky red-colored top, as are many other attendees— greets her audience by reminding us that New Year’s is “the most important holiday in the Chinese calendar. It’s about renewal, rebirth and family togetherness.” Of all the animals in the Chinese horoscope, the mythical dragon is thought to embody power and success. Those born under its the sign are believed to be exceptionally intelligent, creative, charismatic, fearless, lucky, generous, confident, innovative, passionate but unpredictable. No wonder millions of Chinese people are waiting to get married, start businesses and have babies this year.

Grace Young. Photo courtesy of Steven Mark Neeham

The powerful dragon is a good symbol for Grace Young, a determined woman on a mission. Her goal: to rejuvenate authentic Chinese home cooking by keeping the wok tradition alive. “For 2000 years, the wok has been the iron thread that has bound Chinese culinary culture.” she says. “Now is the first time in his history that it’s at risk of being lost.” Non-stick woks are destroying Chinese home cooking,” declares Young passionately. “The food doesn’t taste right, because you can’t get it to sear and caramelize properly. It ends up braised and soggy. Non-stick cookware is not meant for the high heat necessary for stir-fries.” She prefers a flat-bottom, 14-inch carbon steel wok, with a long wooden handle, which can be seasoned to a warm burnished gold, like the one she is using today to make spicy long beans with sausage and mushrooms, a dish her mother taught her.

Besides coming to celebrate the new year with her family in San Francisco, Young is on a tour to promote and sign copies of her latest book, Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge, winner of the James Beard International Cookbook Award, which has taken her to Chinese diaspora communities around the world and steeled her resolve to share the secrets of the wok with as many home cooks as possible.

Young demonstrates how to judge when the preheated wok is hot enough (as soon as a drop of water evaporates on contact) then swirls in the oil and quickly adds her vegetables. One tip she imparts is to listen to your food cook, “That sizzle is the wok talking to you. If you don’t hear it, it’s not hot enough.” Her green beans turn out crunchy with a delicate, smoky wok flavor, which Young says sets it apart from stir-fries made in a skillet or non-stick cookware.

Meanwhile, upstairs, a Chinese calligrapher inks lucky characters on red paper, and the guests line up to fill their plates with lucky foods. Wilma Pang, one of the organizers of today’s event, under the auspices of A Better Chinatown Tomorrow, explains the symbolism of the foods arranged on the buffet table.

Many dishes are considered lucky because their Chinese names are homonyms for auspicious goals; others insure a good year because of their shapes or colors.

“The word for celery (choi) is a homonym for hard work,” Pang explains, and it portends the monetary result of all that effort. Green onions stand for intelligence; the turnip cake signifies that things will keep getting better. The apple means smooth sailing ahead and the tangerine is considered lucky because its orange color connects to gold. Its leaves represent growth and prosperity.

Although, many Chinese New Years foods vary by family and village, the one universal dish is crescent shaped dumplings. Traditionally, dumplings are made on New Years Eve by all the members of the family, working together. Their shape represents gold ingots and so symbolizes good fortune for the upcoming year. “The more you make, it’s like putting money in the bank,” says Pang. “And often, we hide a coin in one dumpling for a lucky diner to find.”

Pang points out the chicken with its head and feet still attached. “Very important to cook an entire chicken, for family togetherness.”

“See these cookies that open up with a smiling face, they represent happiness,” says Pang.

During the meal, there is one dish that has even the Chinese diners stumped. What are those roundish starchy vegetables? “Arrowroot,” Pang answers and holds up a fresh one, slyly smiling as she explains, “See this shape, with the little part that sticks out – that’s for having boy babies.”

After lunch, I have a chance to chat with Grace Young and ask her a few questions.

She grew up eating the traditional Cantonese foods her parents prepared. But at age 12, discovered Julia Child on TV and became fascinated with French cooking, and its entirely different culinary vocabulary. After apprenticing with French chef Josephine Araldo in San Francisco, Young moved to New York in 1979, and worked writing and testing recipes for General Foods. Then she ran the test kitchen at Time Life Books for 18 years, and produced more than 40 cookbooks that spanned the globe.

A chance comment from a cousin ignited the spark of Young’s passion to explore her own family’s culinary culture. Her cousin said, ”When it comes to Chinese cooking, I don’t even try because you can’t beat the Chinese take-out in San Francisco.” Young feared that if most second generation Chinese shared her cousin’s indifference towards learning to make the food of their ancestors, a wealth of authentic recipes and foodways might disappear.

For three years, she made numerous visits to San Francisco to learn her parents’ and family’s recipes. This led to her parents sharing stories about customs and traditions associated with the food, as well as tales from their lives in China that she had never heard before. Young’s first book, The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen, was published in 1999 and won the IACP Best International Cookbook. Young is proudest of this book because she feels it preserves traditional Chinese home cooking.

Is the dish you made today special for Chinese New Year's?
Not specifically, but it has mushrooms which grow quickly and so symbolize prosperity. I made this dish today because it’s one of my mother’s favorites. Now that she’s getting older and doesn’t cook, I’m so grateful I have recorded her recipes in my book. When I go back and reread them, it’s as if I can hear her still talking to me through the recipes. For all these years, she always made the New Year’s Eve meal and now in the last few years I am able, through my book, to make it for her. It’s ironic because I always thought that I was writing for the next generation. And in a million years I never dreamed I would give this back to my mother. When I make her a special New Year’s dish, like turnip cake, her face lights up, because food is memory.

Is there a certain dish you always have for New Year's eve dinner?
Fish is the standard dish at the end of the meal. The word for fish “yu” means wish and signifies abundance. It is essential to serve the complete fish, with the head and tail attached to ensure a good beginning and end to the year. Traditionally purchased live from a tank where one can pick out a strong swimmer, the poached fish with scallions and ginger is served as the last course of the New Year’s Eve feast, but not completely consumed. The leftovers are eaten the next day, so that its abundance will spill over into the New Year. Lobster, as the king of the ocean, represents the energy of the dragon. But any seafood is auspicious. Shrimp, whose name ha sounds like laughter, represents happiness; the shells of clams and scallops resemble old Chinese coins and therefore portend prosperity. Also, the clam shells open as you stir fry them, signifying a new beginning.

What's the difference between the Chinatowns in San Francisco and New York?
For me, San Francisco Chinatown has such sweet memories. My father was a liquor salesman and so the owners of every restaurant and shop knew him and gave us a special welcome. Plus, the produce in California is so much more abundant and pristine in quality, especially the Asian vegetables. I love the hustle bustle and energy of shopping on Stockton Street. When a grocer brings out a new box of baby bok choy or snow pea shoots and rips it open, all of a sudden everyone lunges towards it with frenzied excitement and all these hands try to grab the freshest greens.

As we finish our interview, I accompany Grace on a short walk to The Wok Shop, a bustling little warren, filled chock-a-block with woks, gadgets and cooking accessories, whose owner Tane Chan graciously provided the seasoned wok for today’s cooking demonstration.

“This is the best wok store in the whole country,” says Grace as she leads me right to the tower of carbonized steel flat bottom woks (only $24.95). And I gladly buy one. No use resisting the power of the dragon.

Taro Mochi Cake from Hanalei Roadside Truck

Taro. Isn’t that some kind of sweet potato that’s made into expensive chips? Or a purplish goop, called poi, served at Hawaiian luaus that no one really eats?

I admit those were my assumptions until a recent trip to Kauai where I stumbled upon a divine sweet: a moist, spongy taro mochi cake made with coconut milk and rice flour that I bought from a roadside truck in Hanalei.

So enamored was I with this enchanting taro treat, that I signed on for a tour of the nearby family-run taro farm which produced the purple-flecked delicacy.

Following our guide through lush, windswept green fields among waving heart-shaped taro fronds, I learned that Hawaiian taro farmers face a host of challenges, including hurricanes, flash floods, hungry wild boar and an infestation of apple snails. But they persevere because taro has been a revered food in the islands for over a thousand years.

In fact, Hawaiian folklore considers taro to be “the elder brother” of all Hawaiians and since it is disrespectful to fight in front of an elder, when a bowl of poi is uncovered, all argument must stop.

Taro also happens to be one of the world’s earliest cultivated plants. Easily digestible, a good source of fiber, Vitamin C, E, B6, calcium, potassium and iron, it is featured in the cuisines of more than two-dozen countries from Brazil to China. Every part of the plant is cooked and consumed: leaves are stir-fried, steamed or made into soup; stems sautéed, boiled or ground; and the roots (technically termed corms) are steamed, fried, mashed, and appear in everything from appetizers to desserts.

When I said a tearful goodbye to my sweet little Hawaiian taro mochi cake and returned stateside, I set myself a quest -- I love quests -- to unearth (pardon the pun) a range of international dishes made from this worldwide staple. Shouldn’t be too hard in the mini-United Nations we call the East Bay.

Fried Taro Roll

First stop: Berkeley’s Green Papaya Thai Vegetarian Cuisine, a pleasant café with a long menu, for their fried taro appetizer, a generous plate of warm sliced taro roll made with tapioca and rice flours and red beans. Deep-fried in a paper-thin sheet of bean curd, its crispy golden skin contrasts nicely with the creamy filling, in a typical lavender-taro-hue.

Taro plays a starring role in many Chinese dishes, including a taro cake traditionally eaten for Chinese New Years. Even McDonald’s has caught on; their restaurants in China sell taro pies.

Two dim sum classics highlight the taro root. Squat squares of pan-fried taro cake are made from rice flour and dried scallops, shrimp, mushrooms and Chinese bacon or sausage. But the more eye-catching morsels are taro dumplings. These pork-filled balls have a wispy, lacy shell that results from deep-frying the thick coating of boiled mashed taro.

I recently sampled some yummy dumplings at Peony in Oakland Chinatown; with their fluffy, crunchy coating, it was like biting into a crispy cloud. (Hint: for the best experience, ask for them to be brought piping hot).

Vietnamese cuisine includes taro in spring rolls, soups, and desserts. Piedmont Avenue’s stylish Xyclo offers appetizers in which taro plays a supporting role; in their Xyclo roll, it’s tucked inside crispy, cigar shaped tubes along with finely chopped chicken, shrimp, carrots, mushrooms and glass noodles.

Besides poi, the sacred mixture of pounded taro root and water, the taro plant is an essential part of another Hawaiian culinary tradition: laulau, which utilizes its leaves. Pork or chicken and salted butterfish are wrapped in taro leaves and then enfolded in inedible ti leaves. The chunky green packages are steamed for several hours, turning the taro leaves to a soft, smoky (and vitamin rich) mush.

Berkeley’s Wiki Wiki Hawaiian BBQ serves up hefty portions of island favorites to the starving-student crowd. My pork laulau actually wasn’t too bad. When I inquired how they prepare it, I was told that frozen pre-made laulaus are shipped from Hawaii. Have with scoop of rice and macaroni salad for the full island experience.

For an easy DIY luau, head to Berkeley’s Tokyo Fish Market. They carry frozen Hawaiian pork or chicken laulau with no added chemicals or preservatives. You steam them at home.

On the sweet side, taro turns up in a myriad of mauve incarnations:
The ubiquitous taro bubble tea drink originated in Taiwan. Taro powder provides a thickener, a nutty taste and the light purple color. I’m partial to the bubble tea at Albany’s Tay Tah Café on Solano Avenue.

A warming Chinese dessert for a cold evening: chunks of cooked taro in a bowl of hot sago (think tapioca) pudding. My go-to unassuming Chinese dessert spot: Oakland’s Yummy Guide.

My teen-age daughter turned me on to my favorite taro treat: Yogurtland’s taro frozen yogurt. One of the regular flavors in their two Berkeley locations, its tartness forms the perfect base for fruit and topping creations.

I am not done trekking the taro trail; there are many ethnic taro specialties yet to taste:

Toranguk, a Korean soup traditionally served at Chuseok, the harvest holiday.

Sinigang, the tamarind-based national stew of the Philippines.

And a range of Indian regional dishes including leaf pancake, stem saag and a spicy taro curry with prawn.

Anyone know a good Maldivian restaurant? I hear natives of the Maldives (stunning islands in the Indian Ocean) eat their cooked taro with grated coconut, chili paste and fish soup.

Done alone, a night of drinking is considered sad, unhealthy, even pathetic. Pretty fun too, if you ask me, but I once had a therapist who told me otherwise. An adventure in the company of friends, on the other hand, promises shared experience, a way to fortify and express friendship. In either case, setting means a lot. Draining a few beers on a weekday evening at a dive three blocks from my house is a pleasant, if fairly pedestrian activity. I pair it with a game I want to watch, or someone I'd like to see. It's technically going out, but too close to home to feel very exciting. If I’m making a night of it, I prefer to leave my neighborhood and go somewhere far from the places I do laundry, buy groceries, and wait for buses, a setting where I won't see anyone I don't want to see, or suffer the irritating, familiar personalities populating the Mission on weekend nights. I also like going somewhere where good eats await in the early morning hours. When I can, I go to Chinatown.

I'm aware white people have been pursuing "exotic" vice on Grant St. for a century-and-a-half. I don't feel part of this tradition. At least, I’d hate to be some obnoxious urban explorer strolling jauntily down narrow stone streets, ducking red lanterns, hoping to catch a whiff of opium sliding out from under a door as I head to Li Po Lounge or Buddha Bar to sip the same drinks I can order anywhere else. I don't fantasize about gambling dens teeming with shady characters. I've read up on the salacious criminal history of the place and seen a few movies, but the allure has little to do with Chinatown's past, and a lot more to do with its present.

At around 7:30 on Friday night, I crossed the intersection of Grant and Bush, and walked up the hill, under the Dragon Gate. As I walked north, past a parade of seafood restaurants with their dedicated hawkers trumpeting specials outside and drab shops selling cheap baubles and katana blades, a procession of tourists headed in the other direction, back toward their Union Square hotels. Families with sulking teens dragging behind, elderly couples in hiking boots and bad hats -- they were finishing up their visits to the hallowed strip. They had snapped their pictures, scarfed their expensive dim sum lunches, and purchased a few curiosities to haul home. Dusk was settling down. They were exiting the premises, relinquishing it to the locals and anyone else coming through. It felt like a reverse commute. By 8:30, the streets were nearly empty, and I was at the Buddha Bar with a friend, my hand wrapped around an extremely cold bottle of Budweiser.

Save for us and the bartender, the bar was empty too. A few hours and several drinks later, other actors had entered the scene: a strange, lurching man with gigantic headphones covering his ears and an inability to stay upright on his stool for more than a few minutes, a tall, talkative blond lady, and a waitress in a red dress from the restaurant next door. The waitress was talking shit to the bartender, singing badly and loudly along with The Righteous Brothers emanating from the petrified jukebox.

You lost that lovin’ feeling
Whoa, that lovin’ feeling.

By 11 p.m., the blond lady was playing Liar's Dice with the bartender. If she lost, he said, she would remove some clothing. If he lost, she said, he'd pour ten free drinks. She won and passed the cherry-topped cocktails out like grocery store samples. The lurching man was gone. The waitress left and came back again. She knew the blond lady; they had cigarette after cigarette outside, cackling. The blond lady had just returned from Vegas, where she'd ditched a wealthy boyfriend only after running up a monstrous tab on their luxury suite. She was drowning out the wheezy jukebox chattering on about the boyfriend and others she'd had. The bar was her stage, the customers her captive audience.

At Buddha, the bathroom is down a flight of stairs, past stacks of empty boxes. The bartender dutifully buzzes open the lock for each costumer requiring relief, a task he repeats over a hundred times nightly. More people were streaming in now -- a weary, beach-scorched couple having a nightcap, a bunch of noisy bros who'd cabbed over from a Polk Street meat market -- and suddenly the skinny little bar packed with bodies. Every three seconds, the Liar's Dice cup slammed down on the bar and someone screamed in horror or joy above the din. The weird, jerky rhythmic pattern of buzzer and cup was coming at me in stereo---the former honking in one ear, the latter banging away in the other. An hour before closing, we moved onto the more spacious Li Po Lounge across the street, where the mixed drinks taste like rubbing alcohol and the booths in the back are covered in sleazy vinyl the color of fingernail paint. As we squeaked and slid around a table in the back, I flashed on a flickering memory of a night in 2003 when some friends visited from New York and danced from table-top to table-top, hopping like frogs. I wasn’t sure if the memory was real, but it was in my head all the same.

At 2:30 a.m., my friend and I finally had what we hadn’t realized we’d been waiting for: a hearty “dinfast,” that blurry, yet satisfying repast enjoyed between closing time and dawn by witless forgot-to-eat-before-I-drank party people and late-shift toilers alike. My friend had been to Yuet Lee (1300 Stockton at Broadway) on a few prior occasions. In spite of my eight years in the city and occasional forays into Chinatown, I was a newbie, making a discovery I probably should have soaked up half a decade earlier.

Yuet Lee has a Coca-Cola sign above the door. In what seemed like one minute, I went from leaning against a pole outside of Li Po to sitting on a chair at a brown Formica table inside a bright spare dining room, craning back my neck and twisting my head in order to see the specials board without my glasses. I opened the fat menu and gazed at the dish descriptions. The letters, numbers, and characters started to undulate across the pages. My friend reached over and quickly closed it. The specials were the thing, it seemed, and that was fine by me. At that point, anything hot and greasy was fine by me. In the center of the room, a table of uniformed cops bellied up to a spread of brown-sauced noodles on white plates. Several beleaguered couples in party attire languished in the corner, chewing on spareribs. The restaurant was really bright, seemingly brighter every second, as if the lights were being turned up as the clock ticked along. I suppose that is typical of late-night establishments. Harsh florescents keep the drunks from falling asleep.

Our food arrived almost immediately after we placed our order. A glistening, pale nest of rings, tentacles, and assorted indeterminable bits, the peppery fried squid had a lovely crunch. The lip-stinging saltiness was oddly refreshing after the evening’s liquid diet. I recall a heap of noodles less vividly. They were very thin and yellowish, coated in a dry sauce redolent of curry. Slices of barbecued pork poked out from the tangles, along with half-circles of soft onion. I could have eaten buckets of this, in part because sucking up the clumps of noodles required such little effort. Though tastier, the mango chicken was harder to finish. In my state, I had a hard time getting my grease-slicked chopsticks to hold on to each slippery chunk of mango. Eating at the breakneck speed my liquor-logged stomach demanded was impossible under the circumstances, and at times, the constant tumbling of food from stick to table or napkin-shrouded lap was so maddening I couldn’t focus on the flavors. After it fell for the third time, I picked one errant morsel right off the table with my fingers. Whenever I managed to get mango and chicken in the same bite though, the pay-off -- sweet, half-melted fruit and tender thigh meat -- made up for the ordeal.

Chinatown is both physically and psychologically distant from my usual digs, stuck in the center of the busiest part of the city, yet remote at the same time. It’s on a different time-table. Overrun by tourists during the day, Grant Street is comparatively serene at night, unlike my neighborhood, which, apart from folks taking photos of the murals along 24th St., draws larger crowds when the sun drops down. As a general rule, I prefer going in when most people are going out, and for that, there’s no place like Chinatown after 9 p.m. I’ll never head across town for a burrito, even if it’s amazing, because I live in the Mission, but I will take two forms of public transportation in order to drink a Budweiser -- the most ubiquitous of mediocre bar beers -- in the right place. That place’s proximity to salt-and-pepper squid ensures subsequent visits will end the same way -- with too many drinks and a few plates at 3 a.m.

I can't recall a month with more spectacular culinary programs and special events than this August. In fact, for the entire month of August the Commonwealth Club is hosting their Bay Gourmet series called "How We Eat" with what must be a record-breaking 31 events! The events actually begin tomorrow, the last day of July. It includes dinners, demonstrations, panel discussions, authors, chefs, nutritionists and more.

If you've never seen the Hungry Planet book (now out in paperback), do check out this online slideshow.


Here are a few programs that particularly caught our eye. Check out the entire schedule online.

Eating the Right Way

A panel discussion focused on optimal nutrition and minimizing the hype. Panelists will be:

Kevin Lunny, Owner, Drakes Bay Oyster Company
Jessica Prentice, Author, Full Moon Feast; Co-owner, Three Stone Hearth Community Supported Kitchen
Helene York, Director, Bon Appetit Management Company Foundation
Naomi Starkman, Communications Director, Slow Food Nation - Moderator

Where: Club Office 595 Market St., 2nd Floor San Francisco
When: August 6, 2008, 5:30 p.m. wine and cheese reception, 6 p.m. program
How: $12 Club/Slow Food Nation members, $18 non-members. Purchase tickets.

The "Other" Chinatown: Shopping with Naomi Friedman

Explore the cultural, commercial and gastronomical treats of San Francisco's Inner Richmond with Naomi Friedman, Culinary Educator. Includes lunch.

Where: Corner of Clement and 11th Ave.
When: August 9, 2008, 9:15 a.m. check-in, 9:30 a.m.- 1 p.m. program
How: Cost: $70 members, $82 non-members. Purchase tickets.

The Provenance of Beef (The Great Steak-Wine Adventure)

Enjoy an evening sure to delight the senses: an interactive steak-tasting event featuring four signature styles of beef from artisan producers of natural or organic beef, paired with four fabulous wines. Panelists:

Armand De Maigret, General Manager, Atalon, Napa Valley
Mac Magruder, Grass-Finished Beef and Pastured Pork Producer, Potter Valley
Marsha McBride, Executive Chef and Owner, Cafe Rouge
Carrie C. Oliver, Founder & CEO, The Oliver Ranch Company & Artisan Beef Institute

Where: Teatro ZinZanni, Pier 27/29, San Francisco
When: August 11, 2008, 6 p.m. check-in, 6:15-8:30 p.m. program
How: $65 members, $80 non-members. Purchase tickets